Slideshow: The Joy of Rotring

Some time ago, I saw that some design guys where I work were chucking some stuff out. With my normal magpie tendencies, I ended up walking out with a box of things. Among them was a 1986 Rotring catalogue.

Rotring (or, as they prefer to write it, rOtring) is a German company long renowned for making high-quality drawing equipment. Anyone who was involved in PCB or circuit diagram (schematic) drawing in the pre-computer era is very likely to know the name. I certainly did. I had only a few of its pens and lettering stencils, but I rapidly came to appreciate the quality and reliability of its devices.

Paging through the catalogue, I came across many items that made me think "Gee, I wish I'd had one of those back in the day."

Click on the front cover of the catalogue (shown below) to start a slideshow of pages from this little beauty.

Slide 1

The front cover of the catalogue. A tasty temptation that only hintsat the goodies inside.

At the bottom of the lower-left picture on the back cover (slide 10), you can see a lettering machine -- a small rectangular case with a keyboard and an arm holding a drawing pen. You could type text on the keyboard, and it would lower, move, and raise the pen to write out your text. There were some adjustments for size and typeface (normal or italic) and an Enter key to type the text. There was a one-line LCD display to show you what you'd typed. I guess it was much like the label-making machines you can buy today.

I was lucky enough to get two of these in my pickings from our drawing office chuckouts. They both work. Unfortunately, neither one is manufactured by Rotring. Here are a couple of short videos of these machines working, for your delectation and delight.

Rotring is still in business, though its products are now of interest mainly to artists, because engineers have moved on to more automated tools. Rotring now sells only pens and associated items -- the stencils and other drawing aids are things of the past. Having said this, the Rotring website is well worth a look. It has some amazing examples of work created with the company's products, along with comments from the artists who use them (select the Wall link at the top of the site -- many of the artworks can be enlarged by clicking on them). The Infos link at the top of the home page takes you to an illustrated timeline of the company's history. Its products -- now as then -- are not cheap, but you pay for quality. I'm glad the company is still going. I think it deserves it.

I think that there will be a lot of EE Times readers for whom the slideshow will bring back some happy memories (or maybe just thoughts along the lines of "Thanks heavens we don't have to work like that anymore"). If you used these instruments yourself, please share your recollections of them with the rest of us in the comments below.

...As coincidence would have it I had to move a stationery cupboard yesterday to make room for an equipment cabinet and inside the cupboard I found a bottle of Rotring drawing ink. Now if I can find my pens I can get the machine working properly (previously tried it with a small felt tip pen).

David, maybe, we should pool resources, then! :-) As a coincidence of my very own, last week, I was looking for something and found 2 of those Rotring pens shown on slide 2, at the back of a drawer. Well, maybe not quite. I think my ones are the "cheapy" versions of the isograph, still available in various line widths but intended for everyday use, when a normal pen just won't do!

Thanks for the post. This really does bring me back memories. In my family there are (or sadly, were) 3 generations of Rotring users, in the architectural and electronics fields. But, as computers took hold in CAD, all the Rotring paraphernalia slowly fell into disuse. But, as nostalgic as I get, I wouldn't like going back to the old days...

No, some of the classic pen and mechanical pencil models have been dropped -- and seen their prices skyrocket on eBay. I don't remember which models in particular (not a rOtring fan, just saw the blog posts in passing).

I just looked into my drawer- the ink (Rotring NC 600 FP) (waterfproof india ink) still seems fine. I see I also have MArs-Staedler drawing ink and some other no-name brand. I don't rememebr but maybe some inks gave better results than others.

I just found another tool that I forgot about to get the ink flowing. Essentially it is a suction ball- a hollow red rubber ball with a plastic nozzle that fits over the pen tip. Squeeze it, apply to tip and release and hopefully the ink would start flowing.

Just did a bit of thinking. Combine these two ideas. Get a UV LED with a finely focussed spot. Use it to expose photosensitive PCB. You'd have to get into the innards to drive the stepper motors directly from a PC or suchlike, then you'd have to write a driver for it......I think that one is going to stay in the "too hard" basket.....

"Most pen addicts seem to feel that after the acquisition, many of the best rOtring products were dropped. "

Certainly most of the stencils and tech drawing stuff has been dropped but I guess that is more due to lack of demand than anything else. They still seem to do most of the pens, but I only ever used a very small sample of their products. As you say, they are pretty expensive now.

I believe rOtring is now part of Newell Rubbermaid, which owns a bunch of pen companies including Sanford, Sharpie, and Parker. Sanford distributes Uniball in the US, but Uniball is really the Mitsubishi Pencil Company (not related to the conglomorate). IMHO Parker hasn't made an innovative pen in about 30 years, although Sharpie continues to innovate (e.g. Sharpie Pen, although I'd take the Staedtler triplus fineliner over it).

Most pen addicts seem to feel that after the acquisition, many of the best rOtring products were dropped. I don't know, since rOtring is too pricey for my pocket.

And, yes, technical pens have migrated to the artistic set, but are still available, with the disposable models (such as the widely available Sakura Pigma Micron) probably being the most popular.

@Antedeluvian - an A3 plotter - that would have been a beast! That would have been pushing the pens to the maximum. Agree about the need to keep the pens clean - if you left them even overnight with ink in they would dry out and take you a LOT more time to clean out. I used to leave the ink in the reservoir, clean the nib and store them upside down so the ink didn't get back in to the nib. How many board layers did you do - a multilayer board would ahve taken days to plot?